Research project

Contrastive analysis of posture verbs in noun-verb phrases in German and Dutch

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Director(s)

HERMANN Manon.

Description

German and Dutch are two close Germanic languages that use posture and placement verbs very frequently. In both languages, these verbs are often combined with prepositional phrases: (Dut.) iets op papier zetten ('put something in writing'). Among these phrases we are looking more particularly at the subcategory of complex noun-verb phrases which are commonly referred to as “Funktionsverbgefüge” in German: (Germ.) etwas in Bewegung setzen (‘put something in motion’). The use of posture verbs, which at first sight seems very similar in both languages, hides many differences that we want to identify. This study includes questions in semantics (meaning and conceptualizations of verbs, nouns and prepositions), syntax (possible structures), but also in phraseology (constituent elements of verbal phrases). It is based on models of Cognitive linguistics (Lakoff and Johnson 1980) and linguistic typology (Talmy 2000 and Slobin 1996).

Keywords

Contrastive linguistics / German / Dutch / posture verbs / placement verbs / Cognitive Linguistics / conceptualizations / noun-verb phrases.

Collaboration(s)

Prof. De Knop Sabine, Université Saint Louis
Prof. Ferran Suner Munoz, Université catholique de Louvain
Prof. Alain Kamber, Université de Neuchâtel
Prof. Janusz Taborek, Université Adam Mickiewicz.